Folk singer Sam Lee’s debut album ‘Ground of its Own’ was released last year, immediately gaining attention by receiving a nomination for the 2012 Mercury Prize. With songs from English Gypsy and Irish and Scottish Traveller communities, ‘Uncut’ have described the album as “blessed with courtly, uncanny, subtly radical treatments sounding at once ancient and, in a relatively original way, contemporary.” I spoke to him about collecting folk songs, the relationship between music and landscape, and contemporary perceptions of folk music.

Do you think that folk music is currently undergoing a ‘revival’?

It sure is. Some say a resurgence, others say revival… It’s hard to define it because every revival is very different. This is the third episode of attention from the mass media and of course the world is completely different. Folk holds a very different place in society than it did once upon a time in the 50s…